Category: Євросоюз

More than 2,400 Ukrainian children have been taken to Belarus since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, according to new research published Thursday by Yale University. The findings by the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health are the most extensive yet about Belarus’ alleged role in Russia’s forced relocation of Ukrainian children. The report found that Ukrainian children, ages 6 to 17, had been transported from at least 17 cities in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territory. Yale identified more than 2,000 children who were transported to the Dubrava children’s center in the Minsk region of Belarus between September 2022 …

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Journalists from India, Togo, Georgia and Mexico are honored with International Press Freedom Awards this week. The legal threats and harassment all four confront reflect a wider downward trend in civil liberties, they say.  For Liam Scott, VOA’s Jessica Jerreat has more. VOA footage by Hoshang Fahim and Cristina Caicedo Smit. …

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Five years ago, Soledad Gallego-Diaz challenged Spain’s last great taboo: sexual abuse inside the Roman Catholic Church. The newly appointed editor of the left-leaning daily El Pais launched an investigation into allegations of abuse by clergy and lay people against children. Unlike in the United States, Ireland and France, the Spanish Church had not sought to address this issue. Echoing The Boston Globe’s 2002 investigation of child abuse in the Catholic Church, El Pais’ probe sought justice for survivors of abuse. “I realized that the church was not going to do anything, unlike in the U.S. and Ireland. It had …

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Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, outlined his views on the ongoing war in Ukraine in a recent interview with The Economist. VOA’s Andriy Borys asked U.S. military experts their thoughts on Zaluzhny’s message and on how Ukraine can win the war. Anna Rice narrates. VOA footage by Oleksii Osyka. …

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A Russian court on Thursday sentenced a protest artist to seven years in prison for switching grocery store price tags for anti-war stickers, the latest assault on dissent in the country as it faces strong international backlash for its continued invasion of Ukraine. In April 2022, more than a month after the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, Sasha Skochilenko was taken into police custody in St. Petersburg, charged with spreading false information for her protest art. “The Russian army bombed an arts school in Mariupol. Some 400 people were hiding in it from the shelling,” one tiny placard read in Russian. …

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that a stalemate in his country’s war against Russia would create a “volcano that is sleeping but will definitely wake up.” “We cannot afford any stalemate,” Zelenskyy told African journalists in Kyiv on Wednesday. “If we want to end the war, we must end it. End with respect so that the whole world knows that whoever came, captured, and killed, is responsible.” According to the Ukrainian president, if the war becomes a stalemate, future generations of Ukrainians will have to fight, because Russia “will come again if it is not put in its place.” …

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German police raided 54 locations across the country on Thursday in an investigation of a Hamburg-based center suspected of promoting Iranian ideology and supporting the activities of Hezbollah, the government said. The Interior Ministry said the Islamic Center Hamburg, or IZH, has long been under observation by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. It said the activities of the group are aimed at spreading the “revolutionary concept” of Iran’s supreme leader. Authorities are also looking into suspicions that it supports banned activities in Germany by Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, which has repeatedly traded fire with Israel across the Israel-Lebanon border since …

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How was the air breathed by Caesar, the Prophet Mohammed or Christopher Columbus? A giant freezer in Copenhagen holds the answers, storing blocks of ice with atmospheric tales thousands of years old. The Ice Core Archive, housing 25 kilometres (15 miles) of ice collected primarily from Greenland, is helping scientists understand changes in the climate. “What we have in this archive is prehistoric climate change, a record of man’s activities in the last 10,000 years,” glaciology professor Jorgen Peder Steffensen of the University of Copenhagen told AFP. Blocks of ice have been his passion for 43 years — and it …

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After living and working in Russia for the last decade, Tajik construction worker Zoir Kurbanov recently decided it was time to head home. Life for many Central Asian migrants in Russia after it invaded Ukraine was not the same: wages were falling and men faced a danger of being sent by Moscow to the front. Then, Kurbanov got an offer for jobs on building sites in Mariupol and Donetsk — cities in occupied Ukraine. “I refused,” the 39-year-old said. He decided to take a huge pay cut and return home to Tajikistan “because of the war,” taking up a construction …

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A woman went on trial Wednesday in the bombing that killed a prominent Russian military blogger who died after he was given a bust of himself that later exploded.  Darya Trepova, 26, is charged with carrying out a terrorist attack, illegal trafficking of explosive devices, and forging documents in the April 2 blast at the St. Petersburg Cafe in which Vladlen Tatarsky was killed and 52 others were injured.  Trepova was arrested shortly after the bombing and faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted, according to Russian news reports.  Tatarsky, 40, was an ardent supporter of the Kremlin’s military …

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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged on Wednesday that his government will keep seeking ways to send some undocumented immigrants on a one-way journey to Rwanda, even though the Supreme Court just ruled that policy was illegal and could imperil refugees. Five justices unanimously found that Rwanda is not a safe destination for migrants, writing in their decision that asylum-seekers redirected to the East African nation would be “at real risk of ill-treatment.” The court cited a laundry list of reasons for striking down Sunak’s plan, including Rwanda’s record of human rights abuses, political repression and policy of “refoulement,” or …

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Ukrainian troops have established a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson Oblast, according to a Ukrainian official. “Against all odds, Ukraine’s defense forces have gained a foothold on the left bank,” Andriy Yermak, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, said during a speech to a Washington think tank on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. Ukraine had been attempting to push Russia from the strategically significant eastern bank of the river, which has served as a natural barrier, preventing Ukraine from advancing farther into the Kherson region towards the Russian-annexed Crimea.  The river also …

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After 21 months of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas says there is much more on the line for the Western world than Russia seizing its neighbor’s territory. She says malign actors globally are watching how the Ukraine war ends and if they see aggression paying off, the world will see many more conflicts.   In an interview with Ia Meurmishvili of VOA’s Georgian service Tuesday while visiting Washington, Kallas discussed whether western support for Ukraine is sustainable, the status of efforts to seize Russian frozen assets in Europe, and her push to eliminate so-called “gray zones” …

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Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Natalia Dresvyannikova was managing a women’s shelter in the Kyiv region, helping women in difficult situations. After the invasion, the shelter opened its doors to displaced women and those freed from captivity. Today, these women are taught to embroider and then get help finding employment. Iryna Shynkarenko has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. …

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Climate activist Greta Thunberg pleaded not guilty to a public order offence charge in a British court on Wednesday, following her arrest last month at a protest in London. The 20-year-old was detained by police on Oct. 17 after she and dozens of demonstrators locked arms to obstruct the entrances to a hotel where an oil and gas conference was taking place. Thunberg has become famous as the face of climate activism since she started staging weekly protests in Sweden in 2018, and she now travels around the world addressing crowds at marches and protests.  She was charged by London …

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The use of anti-personnel land mines by Russia and Myanmar triggered a surge in the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine and Myanmar last year, according to a new report by a land-mine monitor. The report, published by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, found that Russia, which is not party to the Mine Ban Treaty, “used antipersonnel mines extensively in Ukraine since its all-out invasion of the country in February 2022.” The report also found evidence that Ukraine, which is a party to the Mine Ban Treaty, used anti-personnel mines in and around the city of Izium, in Kharkiv …

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The United States and Britain on Tuesday imposed a third round of sanctions targeting the Palestinian militant group Hamas, trying to curb Iranian funding of the group and one of its allies, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, following their shock attack last month on Israel. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement the two countries are trying “to deny Hamas the ability to raise and use funds to carry out its atrocities.” “Hamas’s actions have caused immense suffering and shown that terrorism does not occur in isolation,” Yellen said. “Together with our partners we are decisively moving to degrade …

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 European Union officials are finalizing the “last details” of a proposed 12th package of sanctions on Russia that will include a diamond ban, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday. Borrell said the European Commission, the EU executive, could approve the proposed package on Wednesday. It would then go to the Council of the EU, comprising the bloc’s 27 member countries, for discussion and approval. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the EU has already applied 11 packages of sanctions against Moscow to diminish the Kremlin’s ability to finance the war. The measures span across …

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A British convert to Islam who was convicted in Turkey of being part of the Islamic State group was sentenced to eight years in prison in Britain on Monday after he pleaded guilty to terrorism charges. Aine Leslie Davis, 39, was deported from Turkey in August 2022 and detained on arrival at London’s Luton Airport after serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence for membership in IS. He pleaded guilty last month to having a firearm for terrorism purposes and two charges of funding terrorism. Prosecutors said Davis, who left his home in London and travelled to Syria in 2013 to join the …

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Former British Prime Minister David Cameron has made a surprise return to government, as the country’s foreign secretary. The Cabinet reshuffle followed a chaotic weekend in the British capital, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London. …

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